NEW DELHI, March 18 - Despite maintaining friendly ties with India, the Government of Bangladesh has not been doing enough to address the issue of migration of people from that country to India and deportation of Bangladeshi nationals is still a major problem. However, according to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), the rate of infiltration has come down in recent times.
Highly placed sources in the Government of India told The Assam Tribune that though the Government of Bangladesh, under the leadership of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, played a key role in curbing insurgency in the North East region by taking strong action against the leaders of the militant groups, who were taking shelter in that country for a long time, the Government of the neighbouring country failed to live up to the expectations of India on the issue of dealing with the problem of illegal migration.
Sources pointed out that the process of deportation of Bangladeshi nationals from India remained a painstakingly slow one because of lack of adequate cooperation from the Government of Bangladesh. Whenever a Bangladeshi national is sought to be deported from India, the Government of India provides the details to the government of that country for verification. But the process of verification is a very slow one as Bangladesh authorities raise queries after queries and sometimes a verification takes more than a year. India has raised the issue with Bangladesh on several occasions, but the process has not yet been expedited, which is a matter of concern for India.
Sources pointed out that immediately after the partition of the country, BR Ambedkar, who is known as the father of the Indian Constitution, had warned that in the days to come, the threat from erstwhile East Pakistan would be more serious than from West Pakistan. His reasons were that East Pakistan has disproportionately dense demography and the pressure on land would force people from that country to migrate to India. He also warned that during that time, one third of the population of East Pakistan was Hindus and they would try to cross over. The warnings of Ambedkar turned out to be prophetic as over the years, India faced large scale infiltration of people from East Pakistan and later Bangladesh, while, Assam was the worst sufferer.
However, sources said that according to inputs available with the Government of India, the rate of infiltration has come down in recent times though it is still going on at a lower scale. Giving reasons for the phenomenon, sources said that in recent times, the population growth in Bangladesh is marginally lower than that of India as the population control measures taken by that country have been successful in reducing the growth, while, in the last five years or so, there have been marked improvement in the economy of Bangladesh. Moreover, increasing the strength of the Border Security Force along the border and use of modern gadgets by the border guarding forces also acted as deterrents. However, sources admitted that even if the Government of Bangladesh expedites the process of verification of the credentials of the persons sought to be deported, it would be almost impossible to deport all the Bangladeshi nationals staying illegally in India.
